


30 Days of Oz

by Macaron



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: 30 Day OTP Challenge, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Melancholy, sort of because is more 30 days of oz
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-13 19:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 6,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5713843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macaron/pseuds/Macaron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ispired by 30 days OTP Challenge. I used the prompts of the challenge to make a sort of 30 days of Oz with multiple paring (especially B/K) of Oz's fandom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Holding Hands

**Author's Note:**

> A normal people for the thirtieth birthday (few days ago) would have give to herself a bag instead I want to try to (give me) make the OTP 30 Day Challenge but because there is the prompt "Spooning" and i'm a bad person it has become 30 Days of Oz. And i wanted to write about others paring and not only B/K (ok especially B/K because they are B/K).  
> Eng is always not my first language.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler for season 6. Mentions of character death.  
> Tricia Ross/ Kareem Said.

“Goodson Truman is dead.” Said Karen during one of their weekly phone calls.

“Who is Goodson Truman?” She answers. They were chatting about silly stuff. Who married who, their friend Lysa who gave birth to a baby that reminded a rat to Karen, what dress Tricia could wear when she mets the parents of his new boyfriend. Tricia doesn’t remember a Goodson in his life, only a Gordon, Gordon Pullman from the highschool but Karen doesn’t know him.  
“Goodson Truman, that man, that prisoner. Oh wait that was his previous name, now he is Kareem Said. He was Kareem Said, in fact.”  
Tricia’s mind goes blank. Karen continues to talk but she doesn’t listen anything.  
“You knew him, right? He was that man that convinced you to sue the prison for your brother’s death, right? I’ve read that he was killed in prison but the newspaper didn’t write how happened. I suppose that that kind of stuff happen in prison, all that violent men, you know. Pat, are you still here?”  
She is. She is still here and she isn’t. In that moment Tricia Ross isn’t in California at the phone with her best friend talking about some prisoner that she knew. 

In that moment she is in Oz again, in the visiting room. Her hair are longer, her skin paler. She is younger and more insecure but she is happy when she looks at that man in front of her. Totally happy even if they aren’t alone, even if the color of their skin is different, even if their religious is different (Tricia doesn’t believe in God but she believe in possibilities, she believe in dialogue and in herself) even if some men next to them are watching them, with a look that could kill Tricia. Kareem smiles to her and she laugh because she doesn’t listen to a single word of what he said and she knows that he could read it in her face. She feels a bit silly, like a teenage girl with her first crush and she think that it the first time. She never was a silly girl with a crush, she was wiser, more responsible than her age. Maybe this is the time to be silly. To be in love even if it’s difficult. 

She takes his hands for the first time and smile to him. Maybe this is the time to be brave. Maybe this time it will be worth.

She is still here.

“I didn’t even know his name.” She murmurs.  
It’s right. She didn’t know his real name, she didn’t know how he was outside, she didn’t know how he kissed, how he loved. She didn’t met his mother, his sister. She didn’t watched a silly reality show on tv lying on the couch with him. She didn’t even know his name. And yet in that moment she remembers how his fingers fit with her, the warmth of his skin in her hand and it seems enough.


	2. Cuddling somewhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beecher/Keller.  
> "It’s how a home should be."

“Is she asleep?” Chris asks. He is sprawled on the couch, some hockey’s game on tv and a plate of nachos in his hands. He smiles at Toby and makes a room for him. “Come here.”  
“Yeah she fell asleep, she was tired but still she wanted to remind me that you are much better than me to tell bedtime stories.” Toby curls up on the couch and rests his head on the chest of Chris. It’s warm, cozy. It’s how a home should be.  
Toby talks again. “She definitely prefers you to me. You are her favorite dad.”  
“I’m not. It’s just that you are her old dad, I’m all new with my bike, my dirty words and you know… my charm.” Toby snorts. “And you became a bit boring.”  
“I’m not boring!” Toby pinches him scandalized. “Has you started to saying fuck when my daughter can hear you? Again? Her teacher will kill me if she'll use that word with her school friends. I’m already the father on parole for them.”  
“That lives with a scumbag in his bedroom, I know.” Chris mutters.  
“You don’t live only in my bedroom, you can go outside.” Toby smiles to him and with one hand caresses the nape of his neck. He hopes that with gesture, that smiles talks for him. Says I’m okay, I’m okay with what we have, what we are.  
“She like me because I’m the new one, just for that. I’m not even good as storyteller.”  
“Are you serious? You are the best storyteller I have ever know, and I’m a lawyer I can recognize someone good with words. You could sell an house with sea view on the desert just talking. You could make fall in love anyone with you in Oz.”  
“Anyone, yeah? Like you?”   
“You already know it. You just want to increase your massive ego.” He rolls his eyes not stopping to stroke his hair.  
“Massive ego totally deserved because apparently I’m Holly's favorite and she has not easy tastes.” Chris teases.   
“Like her father.”  
“Nah, you are too easy Beech. You are a bitch.”  
“Say that again!” Toby throws a pillow in his face, laughing.  
“I love you Toby.”

 

“I don’t love you.”  
“I’ve never loved you, not for a second.”

 

He wakes up and he is in Oz again. Better than that he is in a bed in infirmary, again.   
“Are you okay, Tobias?” Doc Nathan asks. After two months in hospital she has stopped calling him Beecher.  
He nods. Okay. Fine. Broken. In piece. Whatever.  
“Tomorrow we will remove you the cast and then you could come back to Emerald City.”  
Tomorrow, yeah. He just needs to know how to wait a little longer.


	3. Gaming/Watching a movie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apparently the 30 days of OTP prompt are really sweet and cozy and dreadful for Oz but I try anyway.  
> Gaming is more “play games” than something with videogames because we are in Oz and no-one, not even Tim gave a PS4 to the inmates. Pity.  
> Beecher/Keller.

When he was only eight years Toby fell in love with two people at the same time. He was on vacation in this beautiful resort in Florida to celebrate some kind of working achievement of his father and near their beach umbrella there was this cute couple. That kind of couple that you know at the first looks that is in honeymoon because they are more romantic, more happy, more shining that anyone around them. They were young and they kissed each other all the time and they made funny jokes that no-one, except them, could understand. And they were nice, extraordinary nice with Toby. Maybe because he was a educated little boy, maybe because they were in their honeymoon and during the night they talked about having a kid one day (and “Do you want a little girl or a boy?”) and with Toby they could play to be parents just for few hours, far away from real life. Toby looked at them and fell in love with both because they were so different from his parents, they were intimates and they had their own language like partners in crime, like the entire world could not reach them ( Carl, the husband, when someone asked them how they met always answered “We sing in choir together.” And Alice, the wife, laughed. Toby had heard them sing once and knew that no one ever wanted them in the choir so he thought that was their language, a joke between them). They loved play with Toby, Alice always helped him to peel the fruit when she was in the table near Toby’s family and they taught to Toby how to play chess.

Toby fell in love with chess too, because this was a game where he could win, where when you are smarter than other kid (but smaller, thinner) you can win. It was perfect for Toby and he blamed his father for not having him taught how to play. But more than play Toby loved watch Alice and Carl play together. They made jokes and Carl pretended to be a “bully” because he always won and Alice pretended to sulking and then they laughed together and Toby though that was how love should be.  
One day when Carl was in the swimming pool he asked to Alice something that he had in his mind from days.  
“Why do you play chess if you always lose? Isn’t it boring?”  
Alice smiled to him. “I don’t know, is it boring?”  
“Of course it is!” Toby was scandalized. After two games where he lad lost he was really bored. He wanted win.  
“Toby we are friends, aren’t we?” Alice seems serious and Toby was a little bit scared.  
“Yeah.”  
“Then I can tell you a secret but you must not tell anybody.”  
He nodded.  
“See... Carl really sucks at play chess. He is one of the worst players of the planet. He wins with you but because you are just a kid, in few weeks you can beat him even blindfolded.”  
“But…but…” Toby didn’t understand. Carl always won and Alice…  
“But when I met him Carl was shy, awkward. I knew immediately he was special, that he wasn’t only a clumsy guy but he had passion in him but didn’t know that. He was shy. And I desperately want that he likes me so when I saw him play with chess I had the idea of asking him to teach me.”  
“Oh.” Toby begins to understand.  
“My grandfather teach me how to play chess when was just a kid like you but I wanted met him. I wanted that he likes me. I was the cool girl, at that time, a lot of people wanted to hang out with me but I liked him and I wanted have my chance with him. So I pretended not to know how to play and Carl taught me and he was perfect, Toby, like I knew. He was funny and a little a smartass and perfect for me.”  
“But you knew how to play. You know how to play better than him even now!”  
“Yeah.” She smiled again like he couldn’t understand, like he was too young to understand, like he was just a kid. “But I can be the silly one when we play chess if I can have him.”

Now in Oz, in their pod, he knows very well that Keller knows how to play chess and he’s just pretending. He knows because Keller isn’t stupid but he keeps making stupid moves only to be correct by him. And then pretend to sulking, like Alice did with Carl when they played chess. So if history repeats itself he is Carl, the clumsy guy and Keller is Alice (and for a moment, just for a moment Toby thinks that is true, that Keller has the same charm of Alice but he can’t think that, he just can’t).  
Toby doesn’t believe in love between men, he is not really homophobe, it’s just not the same thing. Especially here in Oz where the men aren’t like Carl (they are stronger, harder), and the love isn’t like that between Carl and Alice (it’s sex and violence, not love, never love) but when Keller loses the third game in a row (and lose just two games is really boring, he remember) Toby thinks that he would like to keep him.


	4. On a date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim McManus/ Sean Murphy
> 
> Murphy: What, you don't want me to be remorseful?  
> McManus: No! Yes! We're going to dinner tonight. You're paying.  
> Murphy: Okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently my idea of 30 days doesn’t include the weekends that are busy and blablabla my internet access sucks blablabla so this will be more 40 days of OTP than 30 days. Whatever. Anyway it wasn’t a 30 days of OTP (but 30 days of fandom) neither.

It’s just a dinner, like any others that they have in their lives. In their friendship, to put it better. Funny, thinks Sean, because sometime is like if their lives and their friendship are the same thing. Sean has a life apart from Tim, and Tim surely had and has his life like all his conquests (including one ex wife and all Oz’s female staff) could confirm but it’s like they have always been there. Their friendship has always been there. Like a cup of coffee in the morning, like Saint Patrick day. Occasionally, you do not feel like celebrating, but you always know it's there. Their friendship, their bond is like Saint Patrick's Day and for an Irishman it’s a big deal. You can't forget Saint Patrick's day, it's a part of your culture, it's a part of who you are. He would not be Irish if he did not know Saint Patrick's day and would not be Sean Murphy if he hadn't Tim in his life. Their friendship, of course. Nothing more, nothing different. Friendship.

So now Sean shouldn’t feel nervous about a stupid dinner like any others. A beer, a burger or one of that awful Polish and Hungarian dishes that Tim always insists on trying and a friend with whom to make amends for all his mistakes. Except that something is different. Maybe are Tim’s words “ We’re going to dinner tonight. You’re paying.” like was something more, something more official, more romantic, something more. Maybe it’s the fact that the first thing is his mind when he realized the mistake he made with the “Morales’ incident” has been “Tim will never forgive me”, not “I will lose my job”. Maybe it’s the fact that in the last months he didn’t want to date, he didn’t want anyone in his life. Anyone except who is in his life already.

“We are going out tonight.” He repeated to himself for the tenth time in his mind. And the, for the first time, Sean choose to be brave and adds “It’s a date.”


	5. Kissing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you wanna marry again?” Chris asks  
> “And with whom, sorry?”
> 
> B/K Lockdown fic. Fluff, really only shameless fluff. And marriage proposal, sort of.

“Do you wanna marry again?” Toby is reading his copy of Infinite Jest waiting for the lights out when Chris comes out of the blue with this question.  
It is the ninth day of lockdown and Toby begins to think that the honeymoon phase is aready in the past (or maybe you can’t find someone likeable 24/7, even if has Chris Keller’s ass and charm) so any questions, anything that allows him to get out of his pod is welcome.  
“If you're proposing already at least you should be on your knees.” Toby jokes leaning out from his bunk.  
“Oh I’m sure you would like to have me on my knees.”  
“What can I say? It suits you.”  
Ok maybe the honeymoon phase is not over, after nine days together they still want teasing each other. And fuck each other senseless. The time to the lights out seems infinitely long.  
“Toooooobe!” No time for indulge in impure thoughts.  
“What?”  
“Are you ignoring me?”  
“I’m talking to you like now, how can I ignore you?” Sometime Chris remember him his little girl, Holly when was little. Holly always wanted his father’s attention even when they are playing together. It’s never enough. If Toby played with her and Gary she wanted that Toby only would play with her. She wasn’t jealous, especially not of her big brother that loved so much, but she always wanted more. More love, more games, more of Toby. More of Toby especially. Nothing was ever enough. In his dark days, when he was an alcoholic, Holly was the only one able to make him feel loved. Like Chris. Trapped sometime but always loved.  
“Do you wanna marry again?” Chris asks nagging.  
“And with whom, sorry?”  
“Don’t know, some chicks. Some pretty woman with an expensive coat and a French name that goes well with Tobias.” Chris mumbles his name like was an insult.  
“First no name goes well with Tobias. Second where will I met this rich and beautiful girl?”  
“I didn’t say she was beautiful.”  
“Is she ugly?” Toby says doing his best puppy eyes.  
“Maybe you deserve an ugly woman. I don’t know where you will met her, chicks write to convicts all the time. They find scumbags sexy.”  
“Chris I’m not Ted Bundy! There isn’t a Tobias Beecher’s fan club online outside this pod.”  
“Of course there is. I made it.”  
They smile each other.  
After a few minutes Chris speaks again.  
“I didn’t have a fancy weddings like yours-“  
“But you had a lot of more marriages than mine.”  
“Whatever. I didn’t have a fancy weddings like your but there was a moment I liked more than others. Or maybe a moment that I can remember even in the marriages when I was totally stoned.”  
“Which one?”  
“Marriage?”  
Toby rolls his eyes. “Moment.”  
“Oh yeah. When they said You can kiss the bride.”  
“And why did you liked so much?”  
“You know me Toby-“  
“I don’t, really.”  
“You do, really.”  
Sometime their dialogues remembers Toby a chess game. To a move corresponds always another move.  
“You know me Toby, I’m old fashioned. Don’t know. Maybe it is the official nature, maybe the chance to start another life.”  
Toby waits.  
“Without conjugal the marriage is useless here anyway.” Chris snorts.  
Toby waits again.  
“I will never start another life, again.”  
Toby knows it’s true. Toby has a chance, Toby will be outside of Oz in few years, Toby will be able to meet a woman if he will want. All Chris has is Oz. And Toby.  
“You know I’m not a priest or a Elvis Presley’s double and I will not definitely play the woman after the lights out but you can kiss me if you want.”  
Chris’ smile is so beautiful that for an instant Toby sees outside.  
Chris comes close to him, their noses touching, his breath against his lips.  
“You can kiss the bride.”  
They kiss.


	6. Wearing eachothers’ clothes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When you went to Cedar Junction I have stolen one of your shirt, the blue one"  
> Beecher/Keller  
> (always them, sorry)  
> After s6.

Yesterday I met Bonnie, you know? She is nice I guess, sweet but not shy, smart. I understood immediately why you like, why you liked I should say, her. She saw me, and apparently she recognize me or she guessed who I was (do you have a type? All your lovers were blonde, crazy and alcoholic?) and she said that we widowers need to stick together, support each other. The first thing I thought when I saw her has been that she should have had cancer, that she should have been dead maybe. I saw a smart, sweet woman and I was angry because she was alive and healthy because if she had been sick you would not have been a liar. Like it was important. Maybe you would have been alive. The second thing I thought when I saw Bonnie has been that she has divorced from you so she had no rights to call herself “widower”. I didn’t think even for a second that I wasn’t your husband, that even I haven’t that right. But you were, didn’t you? You were mine, I mean.  
By the way Bonnie was coming just to take your stuff, that McManus should have bring to her, but before she wanted to see me to tell me to keep all I wanted, of your shit. “All that you want, Toby.” She saidthat and I hated her because after your death no-one had called me Toby. I don’t want anything of your. Fuck sometime I don’t want you either. When you went to Cedar Junction I have stolen one of your shirt, the blue one. I have not slept hugged to her as I did with your pillow when you were in the hole, but sometimes I putted it and I thought about when I would come out and I would see you again .It made you real. Now you aren’t real. Now you are dead and I don’t want your stupid hoodie or your porn magazines. And why do you have one of my father’s letters? Why Chris? I never received it, and now that I read it I know it does not say anything important then why it was with your stuff? It belonged to the period when Queers was in Em.City and you did not want me to forgive so why stole one of my father’s letters? I hate you so much.

I kept your shirt, the blue one. I gave the other stuff to Bonnie but I kept the shirt. Last time when I steal was because I waited to see you outside. Now I wait to see you in heaven. I hope to be fast enough for you. I wear it during the night, it makes you real.


	7. Cosplaying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shirley Bellinger/Simon Adebisi.  
> Ballet-fic.

She is dancing. She is dressed like Odette in the Swan lake. When she was a young girl, before the marriage, before her daughter’s incident, she loved the Swan lake. All these girls, the swans, the spell that kept the girls prisoners, the love between Odette and Siegfried. The only thing that she hated was Odile, the black swan. She didn’t deserve the love of Siegfried, she didn’t deserve to be chosen. And more than anything Shirley hated her black swan’s costume. A swan must be white, pure. Like she is now, dancing like Odette for her prince. Shirley is delicate, vital, sublime, as if she was a fairy, as if she really was a swan.

As if she were out of this world.

She sees Simon. He is waiting for her at the castle’s door ( at the heaven’s door?) like Siegfried, like if he was her prince.   
“Why are you here?” She asks baffled. She is Odette, where is her prince? Where is Siegfried?  
“I was waiting for you, my swan. My princess.” He says.  
“But, love I’m sorry but you aren’t my prince.” She says. Her voice sweet and gentle like the nice lady that her parents taught her to be. Always nice, always sweet. Say please and thank you. Don’t speak too loudly. Do not put yourself in the spotlight (don’t kill your daughter?). “You are a nigger.”  
“And?”  
“And it’s not how the story goes!” Too loudly. She softened her voice. “I’m the swan, I’m Odette. I deserve my prince and you are just a nigger, you are black. I’m sorry but it’s true, you are black. ”  
“But, my princess, you are black too.”  
Shirley sees at her dress. Black. She isn’t Odette, she isn’t nice. She is the black swan.  
And now she feels in peace.

And then she dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know nothing about Swan lake and ballet. Nothing. Wiki helped a bit but all mistakes are mine (i watched Flesh and bone however)


	8. Shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beecher/Keller

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real life sucks. In particular when it’s almost Carnival and Valentine Day and you are a sort of pastry chef in a pastry shop. I hate you zeppole, you are so fucking good but I hate fry and roll you in the sugar all the time. By the way a wise man said “Well, the great thing about breaking a promise to yourself is only one person gets hurt” so it’s not a big deal.

Doctor Nathan said that he developed an intolerance to citrus fruit, orange especially. It isn’t a real allergy just a food intolerance. You don’t die if you drink an orange juice but maybe you end up to look like La Pimpa (Holly loved that comic, and always asked to him to buy her a red-spotted dog). Sometime you can developed a food intolerance in your adult life, maybe because you have eaten to much of that food in a small period or because your body doesn’t feel so well. Bullshit. He knew very well why he'd never been able to eat an orange in all this life without feeling sick. The last orange of this life was the one that Chris gave to him the day before the news of Gary’s death. He didn’t eat that orange but he smashed it against the glass and the smell of orange was all over their pod.  
Gary’s death smelled like orange juice. And always will be.  
So no orange in his life after that day. His son’s death took away from him things worse than an orange juice, like love, happiness and hope. He could live without orange, like he should live without love (without Chris, call with his name Beech).

 

Then apparently in Emerald city the only fruit in cafeteria were oranges. O’Reilly said that there were some problems with the suppliers of fruit, but he didn’t really give a fuck. If you have some problems with tits you ask to O’Reilly but with oranges? No one gives a shit about it. Everyone in Oz tries to kill himself in some way (tits, sex, aids, violence) so the vitamins are not so important.  
After a week Toby could have killed for an apple. He could have asked to O’Reilly, obviously but after his charge during the session with Sister Pete, he didn’t want end up like Snow White. He tried to eat an orange, because his body needed something different to chicken nuggets but the only consequence was to spend the night in the infirmary. Painful but better than spending to think about his former podmate fucking his podmate. Fucking and telling him he loved him, like he said to Toby before he tried to kill him and lost everything. His child, his love, his morning orange juice.

 

“O’Reilly I need two things.” Toby saw Keller speak with O’Reilly in the laundry room and even without being able to hear anything he knew what Chris was asking. An alibi. For a murder. A murder that was his fault because he couldn’t live with him on the death row.  
“An alibi. And a basket of apple.”  
“Apples?”  
“Apples, bananas, mangoes. Some shitty fruits that Latinos always eats. I don’t care.”  
“Who do you think I am, K-boy? A farmer? I sell drugs, not fruits and candles.”  
“Then sell me a poisoned apple.”

 

Snow white had fallen asleep with a bite of a poisoned apple, Toby awoke from a nightmare with a apple in his bunk.

“Welcome home.”


	9. Hanging out with friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the first part of a fic because I think the next three prompts go great together, And it's a teenfic.  
> Paring: Toby/Genevieve (for science I swear, in the next part will become B/K)

I’m in love with you. I’m in love with you. Genevieve said those words to him just before getting out of the car to go Peter’s home. Toby thinks that no-one should say those words out of nothing. You can’t say that are in love with someone and get out to his car to go a birthday’s party. You just can’t. It’s too much. Someone needs his time to deal with those words. Time and a dinner with a candle and a glass of wine (even if they are too young to drink).  
God I’m really the woman of this relationship, he sighs. Genevieve says that she is in love with me and then smiles and goes to dance with her friends and I’m here in a corner with some shitty drink tormenting myself because I don’t know how to answer to those words. Boys should be the simple ones.  
He takes another sip from his glass and looks at Genevieve. She is perfect. She is cute, funny but never gross. Sweet, educated like him. She says “Thanks” to everyone and helps her sister with math like Toby does with his little brother Angus. She kisses him in front of his home’s door and she smiles to him when he comes back to his car. She smiles to him for the whole way up to his car, after the kiss and Toby thinks that if you smile to someone for so long this should be love. He loves Genevieve too, he is sure about that because she is his perfect and his parents love her. But he doesn’t feel in love with her. He wants kiss her but it’s not a big deal that she doesn’t want to do nothing more just kissing. His love for her is quiet. He loves Genevieve like he loves reading, like he loves hanging out with his friends, like he loves watching the stars. On the other hand, he never loved anyone in a different way. He doesn’t know how love works. But when he reads his father’s law book he doesn’t want interrupt the reading even when it’s late, even when the dinner is ready. He doesn’t have problems to “interrupt” Genevieve. But maybe this isn’t love. Maybe love is quiet, simple. Maybe you can live with love and don’t be obsesses with it. Maybe you can be in love and doesn’t know.  
Genevieve smiles to him and comes close. “Stop drinking! Dance with me, Toby! Everyone is having fun and you are in a corner sulking for no reason” She says and she is beautiful like a flower, like a sunset but Toby doesn’t want stop the drinking. Even for dance with Gen. Even for makes Gen smile a little more.  
“Nah I’m good here.” He doesn’t recognize his voice. Damn he is fucking drunk.  
Genevieve stops smile to him. She looks at him in the way his parents always do when he is not how they want (but then, someone that loves you doesn’t should want you in the way you are?).  
“You are drunk.”  
“I’m not.”  
“You are!” Her voice is strident and he hates her. A little bit. “You shouldn’t drink even alcohol and you are drunk.”  
“Sorry mommy.” Now he says it just to make her nervous.  
“Tobias Beecher you are impossible!”  
Maybe he is but then, someone that loves you doesn’t should want you in the way you are? Love you in the way you are?

Someone knocks at the door.  
“Police!”  
Fuck.


	10. With animal ears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2/3.  
> Teen!fic.  
> Beecher/Keller (sort of)

“I will not do it!”  
“You’ll do it, Toby.” Tobias Beecher doesn’t remember to have ever hearing his father raise the voice during an argument. He admires his father for this. When they fight Toby always raises his voice, yells like a kid. His father talks, like an adult, like a lawyer. And during an argument his father always win. Like today.  
“Mother please, say something!”  
“I’m not going to argue with you about this, Tobias. The policeman who brought you back home told us that you were drunk, when you aren’t old enough to even drink a glass of champagne for your birthday, and only because he knows your mother and me has decided to do nothing about it. But this doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve to be punished. You make a mistake and you have to fix it.”  
“I know that, dad but- why this? I could clean the pool, instead. Or mow the lawn.”  
“Because you are not a kid anymore, Tobias. Now you are just a teenage boy but soon you’ll be an adult and what you did is important, serious. You were drunk and this is serious.” His father hesitates, like he doesn’t find the right words. A lawyer without words, funny. “You are a smart kid, Toby. You’ll have a great life but the drinking… we can’t lose you.”  
And then Toby knows that his father won this fight. Without a yell, just with a few words. “We care about you, Toby.” For the first time after the party, after the police, after the drinking he feels guilty. The guilt will always be his weak spot. He doesn’t want hurt his parents. He feels guilty and then he misses the alcohol.  
“Ok dad, I’ll do it. Just give me the address of the hospital.”

“I will not do it.”  
“Tobias your mother has already called us and she told us that you will participate to our little play for the kid of the hospital.” The woman at the front office talks to him like if he were a child. Silly, moody.  
“My mother said that that I would have to volunteer to sick kids, not wear the bunny ears and make myself ridiculous.” He says flapping the ears, the last part of that awful costume that he would have to wear.  
“And what do you think that volunteers do, young man? They play with kids, they make jokes and tell bedtime stories and sometime they wear bunny ears only to make these kids, this sick kids like you said, smile.”  
Shit.  
“So, Tobias, Will you wearing this costume and play with kids or I should call your mother and tell her that this is too silly for a man like you?”

 

The costume is really awful. He seems a giant horrendous bunny. He isn’t cute or funny, he is creepy.  
Thanks God nobody knows me here or I would be single in the space of a minute, he thinks. Oh well, I’m already single. He does not even remember. He remembers the party, to have been drinking, how beautiful was Genevieve when she danced, the police and his angry parents. What he does not remember is when his girlfriend broke with him. Even more ridiculous does not remember how he felt to be with her, to be in love. Maybe he wasn’t in love.  
The kids, the sick kids are cute eventually. He is good to tell stories because he loves to talk and he is good with kids (he like kids, when imagines his future he can always picture himself like a father. Maybe not always like a husband but always like a father). They love his costume and they smile to him and for an hour he feels as if he were again a decent person. The son that his parents love, the perfect boyfriend for a girl like a Genevieve.

And everything goes wrong.

“Are you a fag?”


	11. Wearing kigurumis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 3/3. Teenfic.  
> B/K

“Are you a fag?”  
Well definitely not the question that he was expecting from a sick kid. Toby turns to look at the owner of the question, compatibly with what the costume allows him. And what he sees is not what he expects, once again that day.  
The owner of the question is sick for sure, according to a wheelchair on which he's sitting, but not a kid. He seems to have the age of Toby, maybe a year or two younger. Not a kid, yeah.   
The guy is waiting for an answer. “No, you?”  
“Nah, but it’s different.”  
Ok. Well we are an impasse.  
“Why it’s different? Why are you asking me that?”  
“Because.” The strangers point at Toby like it was obvious.  
“What?!”  
“I'm not the one who is wearing a furry pink bunny costume.” He smirks.  
Toby feels his vein on the forehead start to swell. He should not be angry with a person in a wheelchair. He gets angry with a person in a wheelchair. “It’s- it’s not- it’s a kigurumi!”  
“And what the fuck is kigurumi?”  
He has no idea, when the woman at the front desk told him he wasn’t listening; he was too focused on his misery. His guilt, not his misery. His guilt. Right. He plays the Harvard boy. “A kigurumi is a sort of Japanese costume and it’s very important for the Japanese culture-“  
“A pink bunny costume.”  
“Well yes.” He waits a moment. “But I’m not a fag, anyway. I’m here for play with sick kids, I’m a volunteer, you know. To play with kids. “  
“It’s cool.”   
“It’s not what I normally wear outside. “ God he is an idiot.  
“It’s cool, man. You aren’t a pink bunny outside.”  
“Yeah, right.”  
“So why aren’t you playing?”  
“What?”  
“You said you are here to play with sick kids, to make them happy and some other bullshit so why aren’t you playing with them?”  
Yeah, why Toby? Why are you are with this guy, that you've known for five minutes and has already called you fag instead of doing the job for which you came, and that you do best? And you are very good even to be an idiot, clearly. Because Toby doesn’t want to admit that but when he turned to look at the guy what he saw wasn’t only an ill guy on a wheelchair but the pair of blue eyes more deep that he ever seen. And when the stranger smirked at him like he was an idiot the only thought in his mind had been “I could play the idiot to see that smile again, only a bit.”  
But more than that, the truth is: the stranger is surely unbearable and Toby wants to stay to talk with him anyway. He remembers that night at the party with Genevieve. Toby remembers when his (ex) girlfriend wanted to dance with him and he didn’t want to leave his drink. Now Toby feels like if the stranger was the drink. If the stranger asks him to dance he would do it (even if of course the stranger can’t dance, because he is on a wheelchair and of course he doesn’t even want it. Toby doesn’t want too; he isn’t a fag of course. Maybe).   
“I’m playing with you, aren’t I?” He jokes. He doesn’t normally joke and certainly he doesn’t flirt.  
“Oh you can play with me, if you want. But any games I have in mind include a pink bunny costume.”  
“Then you are a disappointment, or maybe you aren’t so sick and I should to play with one of those kids.” Toby pretends to get away and then adds “What game were you thinking?”  
“Wrestling.” The stranger answers immediately.  
“With you on a wheelchair?” He rolls his eyes. “Can you play chess? I saw a chess board on a table; we can play if you want.”  
“Would not you prefer strip poker?”  
“You really want to see me naked.” He wants to be brave, he wants play with him.   
“Let’s say I want to see who is hidden under a pink bunny costume.”  
“It’s a kigurumi!” Then he smiles “And it’s Toby. Who he is hidden under the costume. I’m Toby.” And Toby, just for a moment, thinks that the stranger really sees who he is. Even hidden under a bunny costume.   
“I’m Chris.”


End file.
